Well I am in the market for a job, and at first was bent on "Livestock Development" since I am now an "uber-qualified Masters professional", well a week passed and I broadened my search to General Agriculture, now Three weeks later I am looking for anything that has "Agri..." or "Food" in the job description which has made me start to notice "food security" type jobs. On top of that my masters degree requires panel discussions and since the majority of my group is working specifically on food security I needed to angle my topic in terms of food security.
Seeing all this FS (food security) I am starting to get a bit cynical (Imagine that). It seems to be one of the development fads at the moment (a slightly less popular topic than say AIDS and Tsunami). Its all gravy with me until they start to alienate the most basic part of food security, the production of food. I think agriculture has fallen out of favor and I am seeing much less development in that area but there is still much work to be done, environmental degradation, gross inefficiency, and famine/malnutrition... its disturbing. And here is everyone worried about making countries food secure and independent of other countries for food, even if the cost of food would be 5 times more expensive to produce at home than buying from abroad. Even some of the most "despised" countries (Iraq, North Korea) can/could get food either buying or through aid, they had food security (people were still starving or suffering but more due to the regimes). Increasing the diversity of food available and reducing the cost (The cost of food in the US is one of the lowest in the world compared to incomes; despite the gross amount of subsidies/protectionist that takes place here). The idea of making sure it is produced at home is in some cases detrimental. I had to do a project that dealt with Jordan and had an agricultural component, it became apparent to me that most agriculture was a strain on the environment, mostly water. Jordan has serious water deficits but over 60% of the water was used to grow crops?! and crops in Jordan are not cheap...
Anywho, I think food security is a bit misguided and this idea of grow/eat locally is a great concept but in reality is flawed.
